Home Health Coding and OASIS Expert

Many items renumbered.

In its new OASIS-C2 tool released Dec. 22, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services changes the lookback period and item number in five items: M1500, M1510, M2015, M2300, and M2400. Current items use a lookback period specified as “at the time of or at any time since the last OASIS assessment” (emphasis added). The new items 1501, 1511, 2016, 2301, and 2401 will use “at the time of or at any time since the most recent SOC/ROC assessment.”

This is a topic addressed in CMS’s OASIS questions-and-answers, noted Cindy Krafft, PT, MS, of Kornetti & Krafft Health Care Solutions in a podcast posted Dec. 28, “OASIS-C2 — Overview of Key Changes.”

Look For These Format Changes

And CMS made “formatting changes … throughout the document to convert multiple check boxes to a single box for data entry, where responses are mutually-exclusive, and to change the numbering for pressure ulcer staging from Roman to Arabic numerals,” the agency explains. Some examples include:

M2102 Types and Sources of Assistance. CMS put all five response items (0-4) under each subitem (a-g) in the question. “This could be better” because it prompts clinicians to think about individual responses to each area, Krafft predicts. Sometimes in chart auditing, Krafft sees agency staff picking the same response level for each activity. “Each area needs its own appropriate response,” she stresses. Sometimes the responses for each activity may be the same, but they often may be different.

M1311 Current Number of Unhealed Pressure Ulcers at Each Stage and (M1313) Worsening in Pressure Ulcer Status since SOC/ROC. CMS scrapped the roman numerals and replaced them with 1, 2, 3, and 4 to stage pressure ulcers. The resulting items are just “cleaner,” Krafft judges.